


In Sickness and in Health

by Phantom_Ice



Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Cancer, Friendship, Gen, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Invasion of Privacy, Karen Page Knows Matt is Daredevil, Nelson & Murdock is open for buisness, No Angst, Pocket dimension where everything's happy and nothing hurts, Podfic Available, Team as Family
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-08
Packaged: 2020-08-13 03:04:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20167108
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phantom_Ice/pseuds/Phantom_Ice
Summary: Foggy walks into the office and Matt knows something is wrong. He only needs a moment to put his finger on it."Hospital. Now."





	In Sickness and in Health

**Author's Note:**

> So I haven't watched season 3, so this exists in some imaginary time where everyone is happy and Nelson & Murdock is cool and Karen is in on the secret but still works there and everyone is happy and nothing hurts. Do not burst my bubble.
> 
> Also, the extent I know of Foggy's cancer in the comics is that he had it, it was really bad, and something about blackmail and identity shinanagins. I never read the beginning or end of that particular storyline. I don't know how he discovered it or whatever, though if it wasn't matt i have issues.

Something was wrong with Foggy. Matt didn't know what, he didn't think Foggy knew what, but Matt sensed it the moment Foggy walked into the office. Something… different. Matt stood from his desk.

"Morning, Foggy. You know, you can't be fashionably late to work. That only works for parties," Karen said from her own desk.

"Okay, first of all, let's be real, everything I do is fashionable. Two, it doesn't matter anyway because being fashionably late is a myth," he laughed as he dropped a paper bag in front of her. Her favorite danish from the bakery across the street, more sugary than normal. They had stored it next to the chocolate cake.

"What's this? Oh!" She asked as she pulled the bag closer. Its scent doubled when she opened it and Matt blew out a huff of air to try and get his senses focusing on Foggy again. Matt stood in the doorway now, tilting his head this way and that to try and get a better read. He didn't know what input from Foggy threw off his perception, so he started with paying deliberate attention to Foggy's heartbeat.

"Ya, figured maybe we could pay you in pas--" he cut himself off and huffed a laugh. "What is it boy, you hear something?" He said towards Matt. Karen hummed as she took a nibble of her danish and turned to Matt as well. In the past the motion would have sent cherry shampoo wafting across the room, but, to Matt's equal parts embarrassment and appreciation, his friends had started using more scentless hygiene products ever since Nelson & Murdock reopened for business with an emphasis on honest communication amongst coworkers.

Under normal circumstances Matt would give him a look and maybe a line about something embarrassing he had done in the past (Karen loved those), but not now.

"Did you take a different route to work today?" He asked. Foggy's heartbeat beat to the exact rhythm Matt knew as if it were his own. Nothing wrong there.

"Ummm… no?" He hadn't. Matt could smell the deli on 40th and the street work on 42th and the nail salon on 45th still clinging to Foggy's skin and hair. But everything sounded alright. No broken or cracked bones. No places where the heat rose too close to the surface of Foggy's skin. Smell. It must be a smell he had caught. Which one?

"Matt?" Karen asked as he stalked forward to circle Foggy in the 'lobby'.

"Did you notice anything different or new?" He asked, not expecting much. This was more than a new restaurant with a funny smell. This was different than something Foggy had passed on the street, something… deeper.

"I don't think so… Matt, please stop circling me. You're giving me sympathy for farm animals. My mom would never let me live it down,"

Matt paused in front of Foggy. Karen chuckled and walked around her desk to lean back against it as she watched.

"Is this, like, 'the name of that song is on the tip of my tongue', but super sense style?" She asked.

"Something like that," Matt murmured. "You used your usual soap and toothbrush?" He asked. Had they changed an ingredient in the formula?

"Yes, Matt. Maybe we can sit down and you can figure whatever this is out later?"

No. Deeper than even that. Foggy smelled different. Not his soap or his food. Foggy. People's scents changed for a few reasons. But it wasn't like Foggy was pregnant or pubescent. Why… Matt began to isolate the different components that made up Foggy's scent.

"Woah! Matt! I love you, buddy, but can't you do this from two blocks away or something?" 

Matt realized he had leaned in close too Foggy's neck, the heat from Foggy's face pulsing against his. He straightened up again and smacked his tongue. Could he taste it too?

"Sorry. You smell different," 

“Um, I really don’t know what to do with that.” What was it? Fats, enzymes, proteins…Wait.

No.

No.

Matt isolated something earthy, like unbaked yeast that gave way to a tang of salt. Matt knew that smell. But not from Foggy. Not from his friend. He recognized it as a watered-down version of the one he once smelt coming off an old man wheezing across a boardroom of corporate sharks. A smell that drifted out of hospitals. 

"Okay. Listen, this whole super sense thing is… something. And I've definitely come to appreciate it, but we've talked about boundaries, Murdock, and-- Matt?" Foggy fumbled with the coat Matt threw at him. "Buddy, I just got--"

"We're going." He grabbed Foggy's elbow and tugged towards the door. 

"Hey!" Karen and Foggy both protested. Karen's skirt shifted as she stood up straight and her heel clacked with a step forward. What first? Doctor, of course, but they couldn't let anyone waste time with unnecessary tests. What could they even say? Just that he had a feeling? Matt was friends with Claire. He knew it would hardly be the strangest thing a New York hospital employee would hear. Then-

"Matt! Stop!" Foggy dug his heels in and the sudden dead weight at least got Matt to jerk back for a second. "What's going on?"

Right. He should probably tell… probably tell Foggy. His mouth felt dry. He turned back from the door to face the warm forms of Foggy and Karen.

"Matt?"

"I…" he stopped. Foggy shifted to rest on one of his legs.

"Okay. How about this one? Where are you trying to take me?" At first, Foggy’s voice had the lifted pitch of a smile, humoring him. But that dropped off as he looked at Matt's serious face.

"Hospital," Matt answered. Any amusement Foggy or Karen had been holding onto evaporated. Foggy's heart rate sped up. His adrenal glands began to leak.

"Why are you trying to take me to the hospital?" He asked in a steady voice betrayed by his physiological response.

"You smell different. Not your clothes or your soap. You,"

"And what does that mean?"

"... People's scents change for a variety of hormonal and biological reasons. Things like puberty and pregnancy. But also…"

The construction project on 40th hit a snag as a machine dropped a load of pipes. No one injured but a lot of annoyance. Matt shook himself, knowing he was distracting himself on purpose now.

"But also…" Foggy prompted.

"Sickness." Now Karen's heartbeat beat faster as well.

"What kind of sickness?" She asked, creating a single thread of reverberations across the negative space the otherwise quiet room became on his radar. Foggy's breath caught in his throat in anticipation of the answer. 

"... we should go to your doctor. They can make sure--"

"Make sure of what, Matt? I'm not playing this game." Foggy pulled back, not enough to take his arm from Matt's grip, but enough. The yeast smell traveled through his breath and the sweat glands of his palms. Matt swallowed and heard his own blood rush through his head. He couldn't waste any more time.

"There’s no easy way to say this... I think you have cancer, Foggy."

The air pressure dropped. Matt could feel it in every one of his bones. Now that he knew what the smell he couldn't not smell it on Foggy, nauseating and cloying and wrong. Not Foggy.

“What?” He almost laughs as he says it. The kind of disbelieving huff people make when they didn’t hear what you said but suspected it might have been a joke. “Matt, you’re not telling me you can smell cancer. I mean…”

“Dogs can do it,” whispered Karen. “I watched a documentary on…” She shook her head as she trailed off, organizing papers on her desk with trembling hands and picking her own coat up from her chair. “I’m going with you.”

Foggy’s head turned to her for a moment before facing Matt again. The scent of fear-- adrenaline, sweat, and sugar and copper-- began to cover up the smell that started this all, but it couldn't hide from Matt anymore. Despite having no perception of how much a normal person could hear, Matt thought even Karen must have heard Foggy swallow. The slide of fabric and skin as Foggy put on his coat contrasted with the click-click of his trembling bones. 

“You- you…” Foggy tried to take a step forward and staggered. Matt caught his elbow only a split second before Karen grabbed his hand. “Sorry…” His voice sounded dazed as he shook the two of them off. Matt didn’t think Foggy looked at either of them as he spoke. “Sorry…”

“It’s going to be okay. We’ll go to the hospital and get them to diagnose you. You have every chance. We caught it as early as it could be caught. Stage zero. If we--”

“--Please stop.” Matt snapped his mouth closed and Foggy rested a hand on Matt’s arm. “I just… please don’t talk about it. I need…” Foggy took a few deep breaths and began to walk towards the door and out of the building. Matt and Karen followed on either side of him. Ozone accompanied by distracting booms surrounded Matt as a thunderstorm formed more than twelve miles north, about to hit upper Manhattan. The amount of heat hitting Matt's face told him the skies here stayed clear, but the shifting winds indicated it wouldn’t last long. Karen’s heels made a different sound against the sidewalk and Matt focused on the way it echoed over cracks and irregularities in the concrete.

“So…” Foggy’s larynx trembled as he stretched out the word, “you can smell cancer.” He laughed as he said it, strained and awkward. 

“... yes,”

“Have you… I mean, have you done it before? How did you know?” Karen asked, showing Foggy her phone screen and asking if she had the right general physician. Matt heard the underlying question. ‘Are you sure?’

“I’ve smelled it before. Foggy, do you remember the last case we sat in on in Landman & Zach,”

“Ugh. How could I not? The one that finally made you call it quits…” He turned to Karen. “It was a man who had been poisoned by a corporation we were defending. He breached contract by sharing the information with his medical provider. He was hooked up to life support and so sick and it was just…” he shook his head. “That man… do I really smell like that?” He asked Matt. “That whole room smelled like sickness. Like...,” _Death_, he didn’t have to say. His heart rate skyrocketed again and his coat shifted against his shirt as he trembled.

“No. No, Foggy. I told you, stage zero. It’s so faint I couldn’t even place the smell right away. You’re going to be fine, Foggy,”

“But you could still tell something was wrong,” Karen said, almost in awe. Matt didn’t speak for a moment.

“Wouldn't you notice if I looked a little different one day? It’s the same thing. I don't see you, but I know what you 'look' like to me. I know when something’s wrong.”

His friends’ heartbeats relaxed the smallest bit.

They made it to Foggy’s clinic and let him walk in and explain his ‘sudden concern’ under his own power.

Four stressful and overworked months later, Matt and Karen sat at Foggy’s bedside as he recovered from his last surgery. Foggy took Matt’s hand, Foggy's clammy and thinner than before but with a strong lively pulse that echoed through Matt's body... even without the beeping machine accompanying it.

“Buddy, remember that conversation we had about boundaries?” Matt nodded.

“Forget it ever happened.” Matt smiled and Karen laughed.

“I second that,” she said.

“I’ll do my best.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! I'm dipping my toes back into this fandom after a long time away, so l'd be happy for feedback. I feel i missed something in the characterization.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] "In Sickness and in Health"](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20365720) by [Phantom_Ice](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phantom_Ice/pseuds/Phantom_Ice)


End file.
